Players

by Karen Swan

  She went straight to the kettle and started clattering around for cups. She made an infusion of fresh mint tea – perfect for her detox and Kate’s hangover.

  As she walked over to the sofas, she caught sight of a Mikimoto box sitting on the coffee table. Inside were some black Tahitian pearls.

  ‘Do you like them? I can’t decide,’ Kate asked, padding downstairs in her pyjamas and wrinkling her nose. She turned on the gas fire.

  ‘I’m not even going to justify that with an answer,’ Cress said sniffily. ‘It’s just wrong.’ But she knew what Kate’s apathy about the pearls really meant. Her career wasn’t enough any more. Her self-styled distraction method wasn’t working.

  Cress assumed a yogic position on the pristine white sofa – knees out, soles in, hands on her knees, looking like a tiny buddha – and woefully tried to find zen. Kate shuffled through the day’s post, opening one important-looking letter and smiling as she read the contents.

  ‘Where’s Monty tonight?’ Cress asked , in a flat monastic chant.

  ‘Client dinner,’ Kate replied. ‘Same old, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean,’ Cress replied tonelessly, although she didn’t – she was always the one who was out, not Mark. She opened one eye and regarded Kate, who was folding the letter back into the envelope. Now seemed a good time to ask. ‘So, what’s the latest with you guys?’

  Kate took a big breath. She knew it was important to keep talking openly about the IVF; it could so easily become the elephant in the room. But it took such a monumental effort just to fix the smile to her face and keep her voice level.

  ‘Well, round three failed too, but we’re staying optimistic,’ she said too brightly and too quickly, aware that she sounded as if she was reading out a press release. ‘So we’re just having a rest at the moment, then we’re going to go for another round in October. Monty’s been an absolute superstar,’ she added. That bit was a lie, though she hid it well. He was now late nearly every night, and their signature lazy mornings of sleeping late, reading the papers, making love and getting crumbs in the bed had all but disappeared. Sex was fraught with tension and legs in the air. It wasn’t about love or fun any more. It was about procreating. And no matter what successes they enjoyed at work, they were utter failures at that.

  ‘Good for you,’ Cress said enthusiastically, as though she was cheering on a lacrosse match, desperate not to say the wrong thing. Mark’s teasing about her foot-in-mouth disease had left her paranoid. ‘I’m sure each round must gear your body up a little bit more. You must get a step closer each time, right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I think,’ nodded Kate, who didn’t, and being really quite trolleyed was desperate to change the subject before drunken melancholy hit. ‘So tell me, what happened with Tor today?’

  Cress felt her search for calm flee for good at the mention of Tor, and she turned the meditative pose into an inner thigh stretch instead. She was much more comfortable feeling the burn than feeling the love.

  ‘There’s been a massive cock-up. On a huge fucking scale,’ she sighed.

  ‘Gosh.’ Kate recoiled slightly from Cress’s aggressive hyperbole.

  ‘Hugh didn’t have life insurance.’

  There was a stunned silence as Kate absorbed the ramifications of the statement.

  ‘So Tor’s going to have to sell the house then,’ Kate replied flatly.

  ‘Looks like it,’ Cress said. ‘Their savings will only just cover the funeral costs, and about eight months of mortgage payments. It could be months – years even – before the money from his share in the business comes through.’ Cress shook her head. ‘I told her I’d cover her mortgage payments until she got back on her feet, but she wouldn’t hear of it. You know Tor. So bloody stubborn.’

  ‘As a mule, that one,’ Kate agreed.

  They sipped their tea in silence, until Cress started gagging on the string from the teabag.

  ‘Why do I never remove the bloody bag first?’ Cress said, pulling the string from between her teeth.

  But Kate – deep in thought – was oblivious to Cress’s histrionics.

  ‘What do you think . . .’ Kate asked slowly, an idea coming to her. ‘If she won’t accept charity, do you think she’d accept some work offers?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Kate. She’s really not fit for going out into the big wide world yet,’ Cress replied.

  Kate leaned forward. ‘Not for anyone else, no. But what about working for us?’ She waved the envelope in her hand. ‘This is the completion statement for our new house in Norfolk. What if I employed her to do it up? She could spend the summer up there, away from all the prying eyes and memories here; the children would love being next to the beach; she’d be earning without really thinking about it, and it would give her some breathing space until she decides what to do next.’ Her eyes were wide. ‘D’you think she’ll go for it?’

  ‘She could do.’ Cress nodded. ‘That could definitely work. Although you’d have to be crafty as hell about it. If she got wind you were helping her out . . .’ She stopped and considered. ‘How’s it decorated?’

  ‘Oh, hideous!’ Kate smiled. ‘We bought it off an old couple who’ve lived there for over fifty years. You cannot begin to imagine the tiles in the bathroom. And I’m not sure she’d walk barefoot on the carpet.’

  Cress gasped, and bobbed up and down excitedly on the sofa. ‘Oh! Oh! And Harry’s looking for a place in LA. I could get him to commission Tor to do it up for him.’

  ‘Will he go for that?’ Kate asked, doubtful. ‘He could choose anyone. He’s got the pick of the decorating bunch.’

  Cress dismissed her doubts. ‘Trust me, Harry does whatever I ask.’

  Kate smiled. She couldn’t wait to tell Cress. ‘Tell me, then. What’s the secret to working with him? How can I get Harry Hunter under my thumb too?’

  ‘Huh? What do you mean?’

  Kate giggled and clasped her hands together, excited to be able to tell someone. Monty hadn’t picked up her calls.

  ‘Harry came to the office this evening and retained us as his libel briefs. That’s why I’m half-cut, we went for dinner. We’ve started work with immediate effect – as you can probably well imagine,’ she chuckled, nodding to Cress, whose blood had run cold. There was more to this than met the eye.

  ‘God, I bet he keeps you busy,’ Kate continued, shaking her head. ‘He’s got trouble written all over him. Bu-u-u-u-t landing him will guarantee I make partner!’

  Unable to swallow down her excitement or drunkenness any more, Kate got up on her knees and started bouncing up and down on the sofa, jogging Cress out of her lotus position and completely thwarting once and for all her friend’s futile quest for karma.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A week later, Kate strode across Clapham Common, eye-balling all the mothers wheeling their double buggies and exercising their bumps in the late afternoon sun. It was a glorious day. The shadows were long, rendering everyone skinny and gangly, like the mirrors in a fairground house of fun. The horse-chestnuts and beeches were full-canopied, rustling gently in the breeze, and although it was early June, the leaves retained that bright lime sappiness that showed nature was still ascending to its peak.

  The grass had been freshly cut and mulched, left in messy heaps which the children jumped in and scattered by day, and which hedgehogs foraged through by night. Kate breathed deeply. She loved the smell of mown grass. It evoked some of her strongest childhood memories – racing on the sports fields at school, playing hide and seek in the spinney, camping with her parents. More than anything, though, it reminded her of the first time with Monty, lying on a scratchy car rug in a field in Shropshire. She shook her head, lost in the memories. It had hardly been worth the effort really. He’d been all fingers and thumbs and she’d ended up with appalling hay fever.

  A little girl whizzed past on her bike, wobbling from side to side on the stabilizers, followed twenty seconds later by her mother, with a small baby strapp
ed to her chest in a sling, trying to catch up. She rolled her eyes as she jogged past. ‘Who’d have them, eh?’ she smiled.

  Kate smiled back, but the tears were still in her eyes as she rounded the corner and saw Tor sitting at their usual table at the bandstand café. She blinked hard, forcing the tears away, and checked her Tank watch. Tor was early.

  She looked tiny, like a china doll, staring forlornly into space. Kate cast a glance around the playground and saw Marney scaring the pigeons. Millie and Oscar were playing in the plastic playhouse, which – despite today’s fresh lime coating of bird poo – was still so bright it could be seen from space.

  Even from fifty yards away, she could see the coffees steaming – a skinny latte for Tor, a decaff Americano for herself and a double espresso for Cress. Tor had her hands around the latte cup, warming herself, even though it must have been in the mid-seventies. Feeling the weight of her scrutiny, Tor looked up and saw her. She waved brightly, and Kate’s heart sank. Ever since finding out about Hugh’s life insurance (or lack thereof), Tor had switched out of her torpor with scary vigour. It was almost as though the grim and pressing practicality of finding ways to stay afloat financially released her from the emotional yoke of grief.

  In the space of a week, she had written thank you letters to everyone who’d attended the funeral or sent cards, cooked up a month’s worth of casseroles, had her hair cut and newly tinted, and bought some new jeans two sizes down.

  Kate gave her a bear hug and then released her grip a bit, scared she might break. She felt so frail.

  ‘How are you?’ Kate asked gently.

  ‘Good, actually,’ Tor said briskly. ‘It’s not as bad as I thought, coming out. I don’t know what I was fussing about.’ She rolled her eyes.

  Kate nodded, putting her mobile on the table. She was expecting a call.

  ‘And how’s your week been?’ Tor inquired. ‘You look shattered.’

  ‘Thanks!’ She grinned wryly. ‘Well, it’s been an eye opener.’

  Tor knew Kate was a master of understatement. This case was obviously a cracker. ‘Ooh, tell me more. Give me details.’

  ‘Well, I won’t give names – naturally – but he’s a premiership footballer, and his team colours are blue and yellow.’

  Kate knew Tor was clueless about football and that this hint would yield nothing whatsoever about her client’s identity.

  ‘Hmmm, well, it’s definitely not Man U because they’re red and white – that I do know. West Ham? No, Wasps!’

  Kate shook her head and put an affectionate hand on Tor’s arm. ‘They’re a rugby team, you plank! God, you are shocking.’

  Tor laughed and shrugged. ‘Just tell me what he’s been up to. Give me scandal. Some juicy titbits.’

  ‘Well, the silly beggar got caught on camera snorting coke off a prostitute’s shaved’ – she searched for the right word – ‘pudendum.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes.’ Kate took a sip of her coffee and watched Tor’s absorption in this drama. Anything not to be absorbed in her own.

  ‘Ewww,’ she paused. ‘That must have tickled. So what did you do?’

  ‘Offered the editor a debenture at the new Wembley.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And make sure it’s wild!’

  The two women looked up. It was Cress, hollering after Greta, whom she had sent to the fishmongers over the common to buy some sea bass.

  ‘Bet you she comes back with farmed.’ Cress kissed Kate, then clutched Tor and gave her a hard hug. She drained her tepid espresso and sat down dramatically.

  ‘Does she look better as me, than me?’ Cress asked, watching Greta’s retreating form. ‘She wears smaller jeans, the bitch.’ Everyone clocked the two women’s matching skinny jeans, velvet Emma Hope trainers and white blouses.

  ‘What’s the latest?’ Kate asked, raising her chin towards Greta.

  ‘Ugh, bad to worse. I swear to God, I’m a stranger in my own home. I mean the other week, I came home to find she’d rearranged the children’s bedrooms. Actually moved the furniture, can you believe it? I was looking for Orlando in the wardrobe. Of course, Mark hadn’t even noticed. And then, I walked into the snug a few days ago to find them all cuddled up on the sofa watching Scooby Doo. I mean, I ask you?’

  Tor nodded sympathetically at this gross breach of trust. Kate’s brow furrowed.

  ‘Um, Cress, at the very real risk of being killed by you, what exactly is the problem with Scooby Doo?’

  Tor leaned in gravely. ‘Ghosts under the bed, scary men in cupboards. Under-fives would never sleep again.’

  ‘Aaaah.’ Kate sat back, digesting this revelation. She felt her barren status keenly, aware of her ignorance of all the tiny nuances of raising children. ‘Any others I should know about?’

  Cress considered for a moment. ‘Power Rangers: violent fight scenes, lurid polyester costumes. Don’t get me started.’

  Tor giggled at the light relief and scooped some milk foam with her finger, missing Cress and Kate’s wide-eyed anxious glances to each other. They all sipped their coffee and an uncharacteristically awkward silence fell upon them.

  Tor sighed loudly and looked at them both.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, sounding like a petulant teenager.

  A flurry of hands folded into the table like petals, holding Tor’s firmly, so that the three women were huddled together like Macbeth’s witches.

  ‘We’re worried about you.’ Kate said.

  ‘Well, don’t be.’ Tor dismissed. ‘I’m fine. Much better. Can’t you see? I’m out. Look.’

  ‘Yes. And that’s so great, isn’t it, Cress?’

  Cress nodded furiously.

  ‘But you seem to have gone . . . too far the other way. We’re worried you’re overstretching yourself.’ Kate stroked her hand. ‘It’s still very early days, Tor. You need a lot more time.’

  ‘I have to get it together for the children, for their sakes. Hugh wouldn’t have wanted me moping about.’ She snorted. ‘He definitely wouldn’t have wanted that.’

  Cress and Kate looked at each other. Odd comment.

  ‘Well, look.’ Cress trod gently. ‘We were thinking you should get away for a bit. While you can – before Marney starts school.’

  ‘Where? Where would I go?’ Tor implored.

  ‘Why not go to our place in Norfolk?’ Kate suggested tentatively.

  Tor looked at her questioningly. What place?

  ‘It’s new,’ she explained, quickly. ‘Only just got it.’

  Tor nodded, then shook her head.

  ‘No, it’s really sweet of you, Kate, but I think . . .’

  ‘It’s in Burnham Market. You love it there,’ Kate interrupted. ‘Just think – you can take the kids to Holkham Beach, go crabbing at the Staithe. Oh, think how they’d love it. Don’t be mean.’

  Tor looked at her friends, so desperate to help. They were good friends. She was so lucky to have them. But she didn’t deserve them. If they knew what she’d done, they wouldn’t be so sympathetic.

  Cress took the pause as a good sign.

  ‘Please – at least consider it,’ she pleaded.

  Tor smiled. She knew they wouldn’t give in till she said what they wanted to hear. ‘OK,’ she conceded. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  The table began to vibrate under their hands, and Kate lunged at her phone.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been waiting for this call,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I must take it.’

  She stood up and wandered over to the grass, trying to get a better connection.

  ‘Kate, it’s me.’

  ‘Hello, darling.’ She smiled to herself, knowing full well who it was. ‘What do you fancy for supper tonight?’

  ‘Huh? No. It’s Hunter.’

  ‘Oh. How very presumptuous of you, Hunter. Only my husband gets to ring up and say, “It’s me.”’

  There was a low chuckle. She’d been playing all sorts of games with him since their contretemps
, trying to re-establish the higher ground. God she was feisty.

  ‘Fine.’ He rang off.

  Kate couldn’t believe he’d hung up. She looked at the phone in disbelief. Should she ring back? He was the client, after all. She started pacing in a panic, dithering about what to do.

  She needn’t have worried. A minute later, it rang again.

  ‘Kate. It’s Hunter.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Yes, Hunter. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve done it. I’ve made contact with Emily. She’s meeting me next week when I get back from the States.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘My place.’

  ‘Good. And you’ve got the digital recorder I sent over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ok. Now remember, don’t shy away from the subject. Do as we said – put some spin on it, refer to it as “the good old days”. Phrase everything in a rose tint. Let her think it had emotional resonance for you. Lead her to believe that now she’s old enough, you could have a legitimate, public relationship. Make her believe you want to get back what you had. That you’ve thought about her often over the years. You know, that kind of thing.’

  ‘OK, boss.’ She could hear him smiling down the phone.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He was still smiling. ‘Shall I sleep with her?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  She paused.

  ‘Well, it’s got nothing to do with me,’ she blustered.

  ‘It’s got everything to do with you,’ he countered. ‘Do you want me to?’

  There was silence down the line.

  ‘I’m thinking tactics,’ he said finally. ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘Uh, well . . .’ Kate felt off-balance.

  ‘Because if you think I’ll blow it by seducing her too soon, then I’ll wait. We don’t want to blow our cover, do we?’